(2003-12-10) Brooks Dean Coherence

David Brooks on Howard Dean's inconsistencies... The old Dean was a free trader. The new Dean is not. The old Dean was open to Medicare reform. The new Dean says Medicare is off the table. The old Dean courted the National Rifle Association; the new Dean has swung in favor of Gun Control. The old Dean was a pro-business fiscal moderate; the new Dean, sounding like the Environmentalism Activist Ralph Nader, declares, "We've allowed our lives to become slaves to the bottom line of multinational corporations all over the world."... But the liberated Dean is beyond categories like liberal and centrist because he is beyond coherence. He'll make a string of outspoken comments over a period of weeks - on "re-regulating" the economy or gay marriage - but none of them have any relation to the others. When you actually try to pin him down on a policy, you often find there is nothing there... At each moment, he appears outspoken, blunt and honest. But over time he is incoherent and contradictory. (There are also silly sentences about the Internet.)